


something that seeks its level

by Stratisphyre



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Background Debbie Ocean/Lou Miller, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 15:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratisphyre/pseuds/Stratisphyre
Summary: Amita: before and after.





	something that seeks its level

**Author's Note:**

  * For [napkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/napkins/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, napkins! Ocean's 8 was such a delightful movie to watch, and Yuletide was such a delightful opportunity to write fic for it! 
> 
> I want to take second to thank the Yuletide mods, who bring us such an amazing event every single year. 
> 
> The title is from 'I Want to be Evil' by Eartha Kitt.

Amita was seventeen when she first became aware of what Azad did for a living. 

For four years, her parents maintained that he was in school. ‘So studious,’ her mother would say to her friends, ‘taking extra classes through the summertime.’ Amita never bought it. Azad had been her whole world when she’d been younger, before he’d taken off to ‘live on campus’ at one of the more prominent Ivy League schools that had been painstakingly picked out for him. Once he’d walked out the door, he never returned. She received phone calls on her birthday, and promises of lengthy vacations together in the future, but years drifted by in agonizing slowness as she waited for those promises to come true. 

It was unacceptable. He was ten years her senior, but he’d never treated her as anything other than his reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Phone calls weren’t enough. And, once, when she’d asked him about school, he’d abruptly ended the conversation and hung up before even wishing her happy birthday. In retrospect, he’d been trying to tell her. In retrospect, he should’ve found a better way to do it. 

On her seventeenth birthday, he turned up on their front step looking wan and haggard. Not as though he’d been living the high life on campus, out of touch for four years. Her parents hadn’t allowed him inside. 

(“You can always tell when someone’s been inside,” Debbie told her later, once they’d been introduced and Amita had done some casual work for her. “It’s in their eyes.” She’d looked meaningfully towards Danny at the time.

Amita had already known the look she was talking about; she’d seen it that day when Azad had walked back through the door.) 

He’d crept through her bedroom window later that night, once her parents had gone to bed. It’d been his bedroom, once upon a time, squirreled away in the basement with bare concrete walls he’d covered with pictures of Madhoo and Raveena Tandon. Before he’d left for “school.” Their parents had barely waited a week before moving his remaining belongings into the attic and sticking Amita down there and out of the way. 

“You’re getting tall,” he said. His voice was different as well. Rougher, as though he’d become unaccustomed to using it. 

“You look terrible,” she’d countered, feeling spiteful. Four years was way too long to just disappear off the map and then show up and pretend nothing was wrong. 

“Fair.” He plunked himself down on her bed, eyes aimed at his hands. “I hear you’re going to work for the store.” 

“Yeah. Just the register for now, but Mom says she’s going to start training me on appraisals and fitting once I graduate.” 

“Do you want some practice beforehand?” 

“Why?” 

Azad pulled a folded piece of butcher’s paper from his pocket and handed it over. It was small, but surprisingly heavy. Frowning, Amita untied the twine holding it shut, eyes boggling out of her head when she saw the elegant necklace inside. Eighteen beautifully square cut green stones sat surrounded by expertly arranged brilliant-cut and oval diamonds. 

“Is this paste?” she demanded. Even as she said the words, she knew the truth. The gems were too well-handled, the settings too perfectly fit. People didn’t waste that sort of precise craftsmanship on fakes, unless they were up to something. She might just be starting to help in the store, but she’d been around her parents’ business her whole life; she could tell. 

“Does paste sparkle that way?” Azad countered. He offered a hesitant smile. “I know I missed a lot. I’m sorry.” 

“You weren’t at school,” Amita stated. He shook his head, eyes still trained on her twee pink bedspread. “Where did you get this?” 

“It’s my cut of a job,” he told her. “Only I sort of messed up my part.”

Even at seventeen, she found it hard to fill in the blanks. Had he been in jail? Enslaved to the mafia? Comatose in a hospital? Her imagination was unkind to both of them in its speculations, and she tried to cut it off at the knees. 

“Why are you giving it to me, then?” 

“Because you deserve it,” he told her. “Do whatever you want with it. Flush it down the toilet, if it makes you happy. But don’t cut me out like Amma and Appa have.” 

“I would never,” she promised. She tucked the necklace into her pillowcase. “Do you want to tell me about it? The job,” she clarified, when a haunted look entered his eyes. “What do you do?” 

“Well,” Azad started, a slow smile creeping across his face—the first she’d seen since he’d appeared at their door that morning, “I’m a thief.”

* * *

Amita met Lou—“just Lou, thanks”—five years after Azad got out. He introduced them over coffee. Amita made a point of wearing one of her emeralds—now set in a simple pierced framework, hanging from a herringbone chain—and shook Lou’s hand with all the confidence she did not have. The remaining stones she’d either squirrelled away for a rainy day, or sold in the store on the days when neither of her parents were working. She’d learned more about working with jewels from taking the necklace apart than she had in all the years listening to her father talk all together. 

“I need your help,” Lou said, straight to the point. Amita liked her immediately. “Azad says you’re good with jewelry.” 

Amita made a show of tapping her necklace. “Thank you. I do my best.” 

“Do you think you could make a passable fake of this?” Lou slid a photograph across the table. Amita studied it a moment. Even from the photo, she could tell it was a spectacular piece. A brilliant yellow diamond, surrounded by white multi-shaped stones. 

“How passable?” she asked after a moment of study. “The centrepiece is easily over thirty carats. Anyone who knows anything about diamonds will be able to tell that it’s fake in a hot second.” The yellow diamond was easily the length of her thumb, which made it even harder to fake. 

“It doesn’t need to be convincing,” Lou assured her. “We just need a copy that people can ogle from a distance without knowing it’s not real.” 

Amita tapped her bottom lip with her pointer finger, and then turned to Azad. In Hindi, she said, glowering, “This isn’t the person who landed you in jail, is it?” 

“No,” he promised with a grin, “She’s way better than they were.” 

Lou waited, patiently sipping three shots of black espresso out of a delicate demitasse cup, waiting for them to finish. 

And it wasn't as though Amita didn’t trust Azad’s opinion, but if he’d been a good judge of competence, he probably would have actually gone to University. She was still torn on how she would've felt about that. Lou did have the air of unshakable confidence that Amita only ever detected in the extremely competent or the extremely incompetent, and she knew Azad was at least smart enough to recognize the former from the latter. 

Ignoring Azad’s pleading look, she took a long sip of her soy cappuccino before asking, “When do you need it?” 

“Next Thursday,” Lou replied. A small brown envelope joined the photograph. “There’s twenty-five thousand dollars in there. You get a heavier envelope once you’ve finished the necklace.” 

Amita did her best to keep her face neutral, and not look like an envelope full of cash—for which she was being given to do something that was definitely going to be terribly illegal—was all that big a deal. From the indulgent smile Azad shot her way, she was failing spectacularly. 

“Okay,” she finally said. “I’ll have it ready for you.” 

Three months later, the frontpage of the New York Times declared that a piece of jewelry worth over three million dollars had been stolen from the penthouse suite of an old money socialite. No one knew when the crime had been committed, since it had been replaced with such a convincing forgery. 

‘I kept it in a display case,’ the septuagenarian had exclaimed, ‘no one ever goes within twenty feet of it!’

“Lies,” Lou told her over what had become a monthly coffee catch up session. “It was more like eight feet.” 

Amita grinned into her latte.

* * *

Azad had left New York to go and apprentice under LeMarc when Amita met Debbie, shortly after Amita’s twenty-fifth birthday. 

Lou looked resentful of Debbie’s presence, which was so absurdly uncharacteristic of her usual unflappability that Amita had immediately pegged Debbie as law enforcement. She’d refused to say anything incriminating—not even saying her name aloud—until Debbie began laughing. 

“She thinks I’m a cop,” Debbie managed to gasp out through chest-heaving chuckles. “Oh my god, Lou, you need to do more work with this one.” 

Lou’s glower increased, but she didn’t deny it. 

Debbie, as it turned out, was running a long con to sell off the assets of Balmoral Castle, including a substantial collection of antique jewelry. Lou was working point, getting the mark on the hook and rocking a convincing British accent, despite her dubiously Australian background. (Amita still hadn’t figured out how much of it was affected bullshit, and how much was genuine, considering how it seemed to fade in and out).

“The buyer doesn’t know a goddamn thing about jewelry,” Debbie assured her. “Just throw some rhinestones in some stainless steel and we can pass it off as expensive.” 

“That’s putting a lot of faith in your ability to lie,” Amita pointed out. 

“Hon, our entire lives revolve around our ability to lie.” It should’ve been condescending, but Debbie sounded so genuinely delighted that Amita found it hard to hold it against her. 

Lou leaned forward, and Amita found herself drifting into the other woman’s orbit as she spoke for the first time since reluctantly introducing her to Debbie, “Can you do it?” 

“Of course I can,” Amita said, valiantly fighting not to smile. “What all do you need?”

Unlike Lou, who tended towards putting in orders and then disappearing to do whatever it was cons did while waiting on delivery, Debbie took to showing up in the shop, making small talk with Amita’s mother, and made a charming nuisance of herself. She hovered at Amita’s shoulder while she worked, noisily drank out of a series of paper coffee cups she left scattered across the store, and—most tellingly—talked endlessly about Lou. Amita wasn’t even sure she knew she was doing it. 

“How long have you two been together?” she asked at one point, peering through a magnifier at a piece of glass one of their customers was trying to pass off as genuine. Maybe it was because of her work with Azad and Lou, but she’d gotten good at picking out even the best of the forgeries; this one didn’t even come close. The owner was nervously pacing about on the other end of the shop, trying not to draw attention to himself. Amita had already signalled to her mother to call the police and was stalling for time until they arrived. The prospect of law enforcement didn’t seem to deter Debbie’s enjoyment of Amita’s company.

“Our first job was about six years ago,” Debbie replied with a dreamy look in her eyes. “We ran the Spanish Prisoner on three marks at the same time. I’ve never seen anyone work a police uniform the way she did when she pretended to arrest me.” 

Amita smiled. “And you’ve been with her since then?” 

“You got it.” 

“Must be nice,” Amita said with a wistful half-sigh. “My mother keeps insisting that I need to find a husband, but the last man she tried to set me up with had the intelligence of a particularly dim hamster.” 

Debbie blinked. Flushed. Shook her head. “Oh. No. It’s not like that.” 

Amita raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t bother me,” she promised. 

“Really.”

Amita shrugged. “Okay.” 

Flashing lights sped up to their storefront. The man made a valiant effort to run, but tripped on their front step and toppled over, practically into the waiting arms of the police officer outside. Amita glanced at Debbie, hoping the metaphor wasn’t too heavy-handed. 

“No,” Debbie said.

* * *

A week later, Lou grinned at her and paid for her coffee. From anyone else, it would’ve been an embossed ‘thank you’ card. Amita kissed her cheek and handed over thirty pounds of fake jewelry.

* * *

Through Debbie, Amita met Danny. He bought a diamond-studded wedding ring from Amita, and insisted on paying ten percent more than it was worth and complimented Amita’s haggling expertise in front of her mother. Her mother regarded him with deep suspicion—as she did every man who did not explicitly have her preapproval to compliment Amita aloud in her hearing—then thanked him with enough dripping insincerity that it made Amita uncomfortable. If Danny shared the discomfort, he brushed it off with the same blithe charm that Amita had come to associate with Debbie and other seasoned con artists of her acquaintance. 

“Can you inscribe it?” Danny asked, after he’d paid the entire amount up front, in pristine cash. 

“Of course. What do you want it to say?” All things considered, Amita was happy to eat the fee. 

“Let’s just leave it as ‘Take Three.’ She’ll get it,” Danny told her. 

Amita couldn’t help the small smile that crept out of the corners of her mouth. “I’ll have it ready for you by tomorrow.”

* * *

The year Amita turned thirty, Debbie and Lou broke up after a job gone bad, Debbie went to jail after a job gone worse, Lou went incommunicado, Azad disappeared off the map to work the long con with a team in Paris, and Amita’s mother attempted to set her up with at least twenty-six different men in an effort to get her married and out of the house. 

The less said about the year Amita turned thirty, the better.

* * *

The year Amita turned thirty-four was much, much better.

* * *

Her first coffee with Lou and Debbie after the Met Job was not-quite awkward. When they’d been working, Debbie and Lou were always “on.” Focused, efficient, and looking for every possible angle. Amita knew they’d had some sort of spat when Debbie had decided to screw over Becker, but otherwise they’d maintained a careful distance which was so patently unusual for them that Amita had ignored it by sheer force of will. The others didn’t know Lou and Debbie like she did—maybe Tammy, but she’d distanced herself from the life when she’d gotten married, insofar as all her scams now involved big box warehouses and online ordering—and she could see how the easy comfort of their relationship had unravelled into complete discomfort. 

Nonetheless, they got their usual orders, sat at their usual table, and avoided making eye contact. 

Amita sipped her latte. “It’s good to see you both together again.”

They looked at each other and away again immediately. Obviously not, then. She knew that Lou wasn’t seeing anyone. She’d had a string of short-lived flings while Debbie had been in jail, but Amita had known none of them would pan out. Lou wasn’t the sort of person to drag anyone into the life, and anyone she would even consider getting serious with would have to be involved. And unless Debbie had left a sweetheart behind in prison… 

“I’m planning to take my bike along the coast,” Lou said, in a transparent attempt to change the subject. 

Debbie paled, but covered for it by picking at her cinnamon bun. Prison hadn’t done anything to curb her sweet tooth. 

“Sounds like fun,” Amita said. “When?”

“Soon,” Lou replied, glancing sidelong at Debbie. “Thought I might head north.” 

“Canada is nice in the summer,” Amita said. 

Debbie pardoned herself to head to the bathroom, and Lou managed to avoid staring longingly after her, though Amita could’ve told her it was useless. They were both so obviously still gone on each other. It was embarrassing to watch them trying to pretend otherwise. 

“Where are you going first?” she asked. 

Lou, ever the planner, detailed the entirety of her trip in the impossibly long ten minutes Debbie was in the bathroom. When she returned, Lou offered her a bland smile before excusing herself. She left most of her coffee unfinished, nude lipstick stark on the side of the mug. Debbie stared at it. 

Amita shook her head internally. They really were the worst.

“She’s going to be stopping in Westbrook Tuesday of next week,” Amita offered. 

Debbie leaned across the table to buss her cheek. “Busybody,” she said. 

Amita nodded sagely. “Just don’t tell my mother I’m prioritizing someone else’s love life before my own.”

* * *

Of all the team, Amita had worked closest with Rose. She wasn’t much for garment construction, but she could hold a piece of fabric in place while the other woman pinned it, which had apparently made her Rose’s de facto assistant. It meant that Rose tended to Facetime her at random points throughout her day, ignoring the time difference between Waterford and New York. 

One such call consisted of her screaming ‘the seams!’ at the top of her lungs before a feverish look overtook her and she’d hung up seconds later. 

Amita enjoyed Rose’s calls.

* * *

Amita had always loved making jewelry; from the moment Azad put that first necklace in her hand and let her dismantle and reconstruct it in her own way, she’s enjoyed the elegant grace of it. 

She was working with some of the rubies from the Met Job, fashioning them into a new bracelet inlaid with diamonds, when the screeching sound of tires outside and the sound of a familiar voice screaming unrepeatable expletives filled the shop. A few moments later, Constance waltzed in. She smiled and passed by a few of their regulars and a couple of lost tourists who had come in only minutes before and were wearing the perpetual sneer of the unimpressed. The regulars remained unharassed. The younger of the two tourists was eventually going to realize he was in need of a new watch.

“Hey. You free?” Constance asked. 

Amita refused to glance over at her mother, who was watching Constance in such a way that Amita had to wonder if she’d noticed the lift, no matter how artfully done.

“I could take a break,” Amita nodded. She really needed Constance out of here before her mother did something mortifying. 

“Great!” She leaned in over the counter between them. “You got any bougie shit you could throw on?” 

“Why, is this a date?” Amita asked. 

Constance grinned, delighted. “Could be.” 

“Give me five.”

Constance eyed up the shop. “I’ll just poke around while you get ready.” 

Amita stole through the door separating the shop from her parent’s apartment. She’d moved most of her things over to her new loft in Chelsea, but she could probably scare something up that made her look respectably upper class. She picked out one of her mother’s nicest blouses—a bit tight through her chest, but not in an unflattering way—and paired it with a silky pair of swishy trousers. She touched up her eye make up, threw on her coat, and returned to the shop to pick out a couple of their nicer pieces to complement the ensemble. 

Constance whistled when she came back. She’d migrated from Amita’s workspace to the other end of the store, presumably to eye up their cheap rhinestone display pieces. They kept them around mostly as examples of the custom work they could do, and Amita’s gaze barely glanced over the underlit case before she noticed that one of their engagement rings had disappeared. 

“I’ll be back,” she told her mother in English.

Her mother’s lips pursed, but she declined to comment. Moving out had done wonders for their relationship, really.

Nine Ball was waiting on the curb in a beautiful vintage convertible. Amita knew next to nothing about cars, but even then she could tell that the vehicle was a thing of beauty. Nine Ball’s face was set in a tight scowl, glaring at everything and nothing in particular.

Amita glanced at Constance, who shrugged and hopped over the passenger’s side door and into the backseat, ignoring Nine Ball’s glower when her sneakers came in touch with the leather upholstery. 

“Hey,” Amita said gamely. She leaned over to peck Nine Ball’s cheek. The sweet-skunky smell of weed clung to her hair, mixing with the scent of her skin in a powerful combination. 

“Sup?” Nine Ball didn’t wait for a response before screeching away from the curb, close to moving down poor Baba Vandayar as she careened through a crosswalk. 

“She’s in a mood,” Constance offered, leaning forward between their seats.

“Fuck you,” Nine Ball replied without ire. Constance shrugged at Amita, and fell into silence as they wound their way through alleys and side streets, out and away from the oppressive crowds of Amita’s neighbourhood and navigating their way onto streets that had been the upscale victims of gentrification; the shoppes lining the streets had once been filled with small, locally-owned businesses, until they’d all been muscled out by greedy developers who wanted to cash in on the Harlem expansion. 

Nine Ball slammed on the breaks and spun them down a narrow side alley before killing the ignition. 

“My baby sister,” she began. She paused. 

“Veronica,” Amita offered. 

“Veronica,” Nine Ball repeated. “Is a fucking genius.” Amita nodded in agreement. Anyone who could figure out the way to circumvent Cartier’s security in less than an hour was likely certifiable in the genius category. “She got kicked out of one of these bullshit fucking boutiques yesterday.” 

“Why?” 

Nine Ball sniffed. “The fuck do you think?” 

Amita’s mouth twisted up in a moue of distaste, and she glanced at Constance in the rear-view mirror. “The glim dropper?” 

Constance grinned and pulled the engagement ring she’d nicked from the store out of her pocket. Upon casual inspection, it was gorgeous. One of her more elaborate pieces, a brilliant cut diamond wrapped in an intricate weave of pavé-cut sapphires. It easily would’ve been priced at close to ten thousand dollars, if it wasn’t made of paste. 

“It’s the one across the street, two doors down on the left,” Nine Ball said. 

“Make the bitch eat it up,” Constance told her. 

Amita grinned and slipped out of the car. Her heels clacked against the pavement as she made her way towards the boutique, immediately unimpressed by the front window. She liked to think she had an eye for design, and the hideous bolts of fabric they’d put up could only be some attempt to restore paisley to whatever dubious standing it’d had prior to people realizing it was ugly as sin. 

The woman behind the counter greeted her with a tight smile when she walked in the front door. Her face had the telltale signs of Botox, supplemented with unnecessarily extravagant eye makeup and a dark red lip which both would’ve been way more appropriate for an evening out, instead of the middle of the day during the work week. 

“Welcome to my store,” she said. Her voice was accented with French so fake that Amita had to wonder if she’d ever actually taken a moment to listen to it. “Please let me show you around. Would you care for a glass of champagne?” 

“That would be lovely,” Amita said. 

A few minutes later, holding a glass of cheap sparkling wine that would’ve brought shame on France had it been actual champagne, Amita found herself being escorted from one design to the next, listening as the woman used the word ‘couture’ incorrectly approximately every fifteen seconds. Amita would have found it substantially more irritating if she wasn’t so hung up on the fact that the woman seemed to believe ‘magnifique’ rhymed with ‘terrific.’ 

Amita made a point of tucking her hair behind her ear, showing off the ring. From behind her wrist, she watched the woman’s eyes follow the trail of her arm, settling on the ring. 

“We set our date for June,” Amita told her with a grin, waggling her finger. 

“ _C’est parfait!_ ” 

‘Sest per-fate.’ Honestly. Amita did her best not to cringe. 

She wandered around the shoppe a few more minutes, asking a few questions here and there, until another customer walked in, and the woman took off to ply her trade. Amita took the opportunity to sneak out, leaving the remaining three-quarters of her terrible drink on the counter. 

Nine Ball and Constance waited for her in the car, moved down the alley about ten feet from where they’d been before. 

“Give,” Constance said, making grabby hands until Amita turned the ring over. 

“Here,” Nine Ball shoved a coffee at her. Amita took a sip and smiled into the perfectly creamy, sweetened drink. It probably wasn’t going to stop surprising her that they’d taken the time to get to know her coffee order, considering it was still an ongoing surprise that they’d taken the time to get to know her at all. 

“Is Veronica okay?” 

“Ronnie’s a superstar,” Nine Ball scoffed. “She headed next door and bought herself a dress instead of waiting around. I wanted her to go Pretty Woman on that bitch and show off, but she’d probably miss the point.” 

“Man, I been kicked out of so many places I don’t think there’s anywhere I can go in LES that will let me in,” Constance said. 

Nine Ball’s lips pursed. “Yeah, but were you _actually_ trying to steal something?” She leaned over to reach across Amita’s lap and rummage through her glove compartment. A moment later, she pulled out a cheap burner phone and passed it Amita’s way.

“Not every time!” 

Amita spent a few minutes googling the number for the store, their bickering a quiet, almost pleasant background. She imagined having sisters would’ve been like this. Azad liked to pretend he was too mature for this sort of friendly fire when she’d been younger, and it’d set the tone for the two of them for years. 

She waited a respectable twenty minutes before finally calling. While it was ringing, she held out her arm to Nine Ball, wordlessly, and winced her way through it as the other woman grabbed a chunk of her flesh and squeezed. Unsurprisingly, the woman answered without her bullshit French accent, though she stammered her way back into it when Amita identified herself, already in tears thanks to Nine Ball’s vicious, vicious fingers. 

“…And I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t find it,” Amita said. She held out her other hand to Constance, who pulled the ring off her finger so fast Amita barely felt the brush of metal against her skin. “I’m happy to offer a reward. At least a thousand dollars.” 

“Not even worth the dress Ronnie was looking at,” Nine Ball scoffed quietly.

The woman promised to scour the store for it, and Amita hung up. “Have fun.” 

“I’m gonna,” Constance said, hopping out the side of the car. 

She was gone for less than ten minutes before reappearing with a mittful of cash and a shit-eating grin. She’d barely gotten settled in the backseat before the store’s number was lighting up Nine Ball’s phone again. Amita grinned at her and dropped it over the side of the car. 

“So what’re we gonna do with it?” Constance asked, brandishing what looked like about five hundred dollars. 

“Buy Ronnie a grad gift,” Nine Ball said. Constance pouted, and Nine Ball sighed, rolling her eyes. “And go see a movie or something, girl, I don’t know!” 

“I want popcorn,” Constance declared. 

Nine Ball turned in her seat, barley slowing the car down as she began railing against Constance’s insistence on dumping a bag of M&Ms into her popcorn—“bitch, that ruins it!”—while Amita sat back in her seat, smiling.

* * *

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this,” Tammy said, her hands fluttering around her. 

“I’m happy to help,” Amita said. She wasn’t sure if she was the first one Tammy called, in a panic because her husband was in Tampa at a conference and Tammy was on the hook to fence six hundred thousand dollars in antique dog ceramics—Amita still wasn’t sure if that was code, or someone really needed to fence six hundred thousand dollars in antique dog ceramics. Either way, Amita had borrowed her father’s old Ford and driven up to Albany to keep an eye on the kids. 

(“Do I get to keep one of the dog figurines?” she’d asked.

“If you’d like, but I was thinking of paying you for your troubles in cash.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re friends. You don’t need to pay me.”)

The first few moments after Tammy left were awkward, with both children staring at Amita as though she was prey on the African savannah, just waiting to be taken down. 

“Do you like tarantulas?” Jack Jr. asked, grinning like the offspring of Satan. Lou would’ve liked the look. No, Lou would’ve loved it and found a way to copy it as closely as possible. 

Amita, however, simply grinned. She could play this game. She’d made a killing watching her innumerable younger cousins before her mother had clued into the fact that she’d turned into an adult and she could no longer avoid the host of eligible bachelors invited to her mother’s parties. “Not as much as I like snakes.” 

“Do you have a snake?” Madeleine demanded, eyes wide. 

“All the snakes I like are venomous,” Amita sighed, pouting a bit. 

“Poisonous?” Jack Jr. asked. 

“Venomous,” Amita repeated. “Do you want to know the difference?”

Whatever mischief they wanted to get up to with the tarantula forgotten, they spent the next half hour googling venomous snakes on YouTube before she helped them both with their homework, ordered them all pizza for dinner—nowhere near as good as a proper NYC pizza, but serviceable—and let them stay up too late watching _Lego Batman_ before sending them both off to bed.

Tammy arrived home close to midnight, and slumped in through the garage door as though she’d used whatever remained of her energy to simply get the keys in the lock.

“I thought you were retired,” Amita said.

Tammy huffed and wandered over to the fridge. Pulling out a bottle of sauvignon blanc, she twisted off the cap and took a long pull before offering it to Amita. Amita shrugged and took it, but only allowed herself a small sip before handing it back. Tammy looked like she needed it. 

“I missed it,” Tammy said. “It’s hard to keep a reputation for competence when you’re just doing it as a hobby.” She glanced wistfully out the window. “How were the kids?”

“Angels.”

“Liar.”

“I almost convinced the pizza guy to take them in exchange for dinner, but apparently he was already familiar with your family.” 

“Ugh.” She dropped heavily into one of her kitchen chairs. “Stay. I’ll make you breakfast tomorrow.” 

Amita smiled. “I’d love to.” She pulled the wine her way and took another sip. “You know it’s hilarious that you literally have to call someone from another city to watch your kids, right? What, did they scare off all the local babysitters?”

Tammy sighed and took the wine back. “Every single one of them.”

Before Amita left the next morning, Tammy pressed a brown ceramic pug wearing a sombrero into her hand. Amita named it Sparkpug and set it in a place of honour on her dashboard for the drive home.

* * *

Of all the friends she’d acquired during the Met job—a surprise to her larger than the take itself, considering people in their community had a shared tendency to scatter like scared cats once a job was over—Daphne was the most astonishing. When she’d admitted her desire for friends in such unexpectedly sincere vulnerability, Amita had naturally assumed she’d meant Debbie. It hadn’t occurred to her that she’d meant all of them. 

Unlike Nine Ball and Constance, who’d both developed the habit of dropping into the store at random points without so much as a courtesy head’s up beforehand, Daphne was meticulous about calling and making plans. They went back and forth, Amita forcing Daphne into small bodegas and random restaurants owned by her neighbours, while Daphne insisted on treating her to high end brunches and quiet little coffee shoppes where she was greeted with cold familiarity and fake affability by faces Amita recognized from _People_. She hated the look Daphne got in her eyes when glad-handing these folks. They’d barely spit out a greeting and polite inquiry into Daphne’s well-being before launching into whatever they wanted from her. 

“At least when you guys made me throw up it was intentional,” Daphne sniffed over a turmeric latte one morning, glowering after a young man who’d just finished pleading his case for a role in her upcoming First World War drama. 

“I thought you never threw up,” Amita laughed. 

Daphne managed a begrudging smile. “That’s before I got on the other side of the camera. These days it’s practically _de rigueur_.” 

“What’s so bad about it?” 

Daphne sniffed and launched into a tirade about the guileless ingenue who’d successfully managed to ruin an entire day’s worth of shooting after she’d shown up to work with the emotional range of a damp paper towel. 

“I miss it,” Daphne said quietly, staring out the window to the rain-soaked streets of Waverly Place. 

“You mean the job,” Amita said. 

Daphne nodded. “I barely got to contribute. I spent most of the night with my head in the toilet, and then slept with Claude—which, not a hardship, let me tell you, no matter what Debbie says. I didn’t actually get to steal anything.” 

“And that’s what you want? To steal something?” 

“I want—” Daphne paused as another dew-eyed young woman finally summoned the bravery to interrupt her. The conversation was short and sweet, and ended with a script being deposited into Daphne’s hands before the young woman ran off to rejoin her friends. Daphne looked at the stack of paper in her hands before setting it down with more care than it probably deserved. “To work with people who actually know me.” She smiled, all self-deprecation that she only occasionally allowed Amita to glimpse. “Then again, the people who actually know me all think I’m a bitch.” 

“Only when you open your mouth,” Amita said, commiseratively.

Daphne offered up a puckish laugh, flipped her off and finished her latte.

* * *

Azad called in September, and managed to make small talk for all of forty-five seconds before coming to the point. 

“You’ve made a name for yourself.”

“Have I?” Amita asked. She was bent over, painting her toenails, half ignoring him. Daphne had given her the shade during their last brunch kvetch; ‘An Evening to Remember,’ a dark, sensual red that Daphne swore up and down that she’d never wear, and bought by accident. Nevermind that Amita had seen her nails painted a similar shade countless times. Daphne was so insistent on making it seem as though she wasn’t a good person, but deep down she was like the inside of a s’more, all squishy and sweet. She’d be appalled to realize that Amita had her figured out. 

“Well, the Met Job did, and I know you were in on it. I need someone to put together a crew for me. It’s a big score.”

“How big?” 

“Not Met Gala big, if that’s what you mean?” 

“Azad, I don’t even need to get out of bed for less than a million these days.” 

Then again, the money wasn’t really the point for most of them any longer. Amita thought of Nine Ball and Constance, and their gentle bickering. Of Debbie and Lou trying to find their way back to normal. Of Rose fighting with her seams. Of Tammy’s fond smiles and wistful glances. Of Daphne’s itching need for something in her life beyond vapid starlets and people who wanted something from her. 

With a smile, she capped the nail polish. “But I might know a few people.”


End file.
